65 - A Particularly Awful Bit of Code

Hara lay on her couch, with Tizrav curled under her chin.  No one commented when a swarm of the Great Hive flew in and settled around her pillow.  Her job was to observe and assist Thriti as she instructed.

The code was slippery this time. There were no roads, no gates, no access points. In this reality Thriti was a creature that looked like Tizrav, but heavier, darker more silvery, with webbed feet.  I suppose you’d be able to bound through the sand with paws spread to keep you from sinking. There are all the others modifying code all around, as diligent as a hive of bees.  Diligent to keep us all safe.

*The Prime gets new code from somewhere, regularly,* Thriti said. *We need to be vigilant and make sure that none of his programs recognize that we are still alive on this continent, across the sand.*

*Where does he get the new code from?* Hara looked down at herself and saw herself reflected in Tizrav’s image.

*My girl, like my boy, fly bounce wiggle hunt. We flyer.  We wiggler than dragon. Dragon slow. Dragon pieces. Dragon cheap and kludged and nasty. Seven legs, two teeth on the wrong side, one wing, claws on everything, eyes blind in this colour, ears deaf in this tone. Some dragons mushed together, overlap eyes/ears/wings to see, hear, fly.  Falls apart easy.  Rotten bad stink programs. Zombie dead programs with edges live. We flyer. We one piece, one mind, one program.  We singular hunters.*

*Thank you for that information, Tizrav.*  As they bounded along the slippery ledge draped tight around the code, the node, she could see through to the owner’s country.   

Programs that were once bright, shining, cutting edge, new written – badly written.  Not working with the programs over – here.  The terraforming programs that should have been an elegant, unified thing, a glittering machine all working together, was now a dirty, steam-driven, ancient engine, with cancers growing in it... cancers that made things, strings of rust and ink dragging along its belly.  It had patches of mold growing on it.  It dropped bits of code even without moving, building a pile of rotten code around it.  The piles moved and zombie bits of programming dragged themselves clear, tried to stand and begin a task as part of the mammoth engineering job it was, trying to recreate the planet in a different--- faster evolved --- image, suitable for humans and everything from eyelash mites to pancreatic stem cells, from dogs and cats, to roundworms and even tapeworms would fit. Better an earthan tapeworm than a miner worm, attempting to fill the same environmental niche.

It had the original intent at its core but it was ancient and badly, badly maintained.  It had random patches applied.  It had not been a high-end product to begin with and now, over a thousand years of limping along, it had gaps in its security that Thriti and Tizrav and Hara could bound into.  *Why didn’t I see this before?*

*It’s the making the planet fit for humans code,* Thriti replied.  Her tone was a strange mix of satisfied – for the ease with which she could infiltrate – and disgust, for her professional opinion of this suite of programs.  *Owner code... he generally wouldn’t even look here.  This is relegated to his Firsts, as he calls them.*

*I... see, I think.* She watched as Thriti, with the assistance of her dog, yanked a new, living patch off the old, rotting carcass, modified it slightly, and slid it back into place.   

*What did you do?*

*That set of sensors... on the moon... will see any kind of heat or light... like campfires, or cities or villages, as any number of other sources of heat and light.  There are vast outcrops of rocks all along the canyon that tenebresces... or absorbs the sunlight and during the night gives it up as wildly glittering waves of light and colour, as the rock fades pale overnight. It hides campfires, citylights and such.*

*Do you always have it see this?* It seemed a bit... weak to hide all the cultures on this continent.

*No, no.  There are lollipapera tree wild-fires... they are so full of oil, you know.... the extreme lightning storms in spring and fall as the water moves north to south or south to north. All kinds of things. Even a dozen kinds of swarming native fauna that apparently fluoresce. It covers a lot.*

*I see.*

Tizrav jumped and did her war-dance on a particularly awful bit of code trailing in front of them, down the slick side of the encapsulation, when Hara notice a tiny, tiny bulge on the edge of the ancient sphere.  It seemed like a seed.  It seemed small, but it was armoured in a way that the old code was not.

Where the old code had rusted and rotted and grown green and blue mold and oozed clear fluids, this seed was new and shiny and untouched.  Thriti was examining another bit of the sensor fields and Hara reached out a mental hand, with Tizzy riding her wrist.  Her claw *tinked* on it as if it were hollow, then caught and a hole opened and she fell in.